ABOUT CeSID

CeSID is a non-governmental organization established in 1997 in Belgrade, which combines:

• A large grass-root network consisting of up to 21,000 volunteers – election monitors, 165 municipal teams, 16 local and 5 regional offices, with
• a pool of experts and researchers in field of elections, local self-government, political parties, transparency of government institutions performance, European Union and related fields, and
• a number of prominent public personalities in various fields who endorsed CeSID’s efforts by membership in CeSID Advisory Board.

CeSID gathers citizens with the purpose to contribute to the establishment of the Rule of Law and the enhancement of democratic values and institutions in Serbia and Montenegro. CeSID is promoting these values through its educational and research programs and by organizing voters to monitor elections, as well as by analisys and research of preelection and election activities of actors involved in this process.
Our aim is also to disseminate knowledge about democratic institutions, to enhance citizens’ awareness of the importance of free and fair elections, especially human rights involved, as well as to raise awareness on the importance of efficient functioning of state institutions in the period between the elections.
CeSID has fruitful cooperation with more than 60 NGOs in Serbia and Montenegro and abroad. Some of these organizations are: Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities, European Movement, PROTECTA (Nis), Educational Center (Leskovac), Belgrade Open School, Transparency Serbia, CEMI, Local Government Development Center (Slovakia), IFES, GONG (Croatia), MOST (Macedonia), Obcianske oko (Slovakia), Alliance for Fair-play (Slovakia), Delna (Latvia)…
CeSID is a member of the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations - ENEMO (from 2001 to 2002 CeSID has been chairing this network).
CeSID’s representatives have taken part in monitoring missions both as long term and as short-term observers in Belarus, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, FYR Macedonia, Mexico, Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Albania, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Palestine, Israel, Libya, Syria, Germany and United Kingdom. CeSID also has the experience in providing its partner organizations with the assistance in terms of organizational development, campaigning and Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT). This sort of assistance CeSID has so far provided to the Montenegrin Centre for Monitoring (CEMI), Memorial and First Free Generation from the Russian Federation, as well as to International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED), its partner organization in Georgia. CeSID’s representatives have also taken part in different activities aiming at capacity building of civil sector in Ukraine and Azerbaijan.
The Centre was established primarily with the aim of organising impartial elections monitoring in Serbia, including the monitoring of media, monitoring of voting, and parallel vote tabulation. Following the establishment of the organisation, leading experts and researches in the fields of sociology, political science, media and statistics were engaged into CeSID activities; programmes of work were broadened into the field of comprehensive research dealing with the electoral will of citizens and the improvement of democratic values and processes in the society in general.
CeSID developed its activities within five programmes:

• Elections and electoral processes (monitoring of voting at some 9,000 polling stations in 165 municipalities of Serbia; parallel vote tabulation; analysis of electoral process and procedure, media research, education of monitors and voters, as well as campaigns for voters' turnout).
• Education (education of monitors, citizens and representatives of authorities and political parties in the area of electoral legislation; education in the area of prevention and resolution of conflicts, political system, human rights, European Union; Target groups were high school students, citizens, representatives of authorities and non-governmental sector, as well as the organisations dealing with election monitoring in other countries, which were provided with support in the improvement of their capacities)
• Development of local community (education of citizens within local communities and local authorities and administration, public opinion researches dealing with problems of local communities, monitoring of work of local authorities and municipal administration, monitoring of procedures within municipalities, establishment of co-operation between civil sector and local authorities, as well as the improvement of capacity of NGO sector at the local level)
• Research and analyses (research and analyses of electoral behaviour and electoral contests, political attitudes of citizens and target groups, behaviour during electoral campaigns; sociological, political, economical and marketing researches with the use of diversified research techniques: field research with different kinds of samples, focus groups, in-depth interviews).
• Transparency and battle against corruption (monitoring of financing of political parties, monitoring of process of public procurement procedure, building capacities of public enterprises for profession of the right to free access to information of public importance).
  CeSID has conducted almost 50 projects in recent period, with different national, regional and local character, as well as some 70 different kinds of researches.

Since it was established CeSID’s activities have been supported by: European Commission, European Agency for Reconstruction; Embassy of Australia, Finland, Netherlands, Canada, Switzerland, Sweden, Germany, Slovakia, Austria and Foreign and Commonwealth Office; CIDA; Charles Stewart Mott Foundation; Freedom House; German Marshal Fund; IREX; Know How Fund; NDI – National Democratic Institute for International Affairs; National Endowment for Democracy; Norwegian People’s Aid; Open Society Fund; OSCE; SIDA; USAID – OTI; USIP; Westminster Foundation for Democracy; Olof Palme International Center; United States Institute for Peace; Rockefeller Brothers Fund; Municipal Support Program - SDC; DAI; Swedish Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, etc.